This response indicates that you were unaware that "rear" is the preferred term for bringing up children in traditional English usage. See, e.g., http://www.bartleby.com/68/62/4962.html. But I suppose if you're hellbent on making homophobic jokes in every thread, any use of a word like "rear" or "behind" is just too great an opportunity to pass up.

I'll get behind this post. And ride it to the end.

I'll guess I'm not the only one who's supposedly unable to resist puns.

I have been batteling with the question of race my whole life..... My parents have a plethora of ethnicities in their blood, they both look white, but somehow I ended up looking pure Mexican. I have identified as white my whole life until about four years ago, when I realized racist people were rearing me as they would any other minority.....

Actually, if you read my post, I specifically ask if he's saying racist people were raising him (bringing him up). However, not even this makes sense, unless he's saying his parents were racist against him, which seems unlikely. (He clearly indicates he's still being raised by his biological parents, not foster parents or an orphanage.) I therefore suspect he intended another term altogether.

Finally, it's difficult to argue that "rear" is still the preferred term in this area, if it ever was, which is yet another reason it's an odd (and likely mistaken) word choice.

But I suppose if you're hellbent on making homophobic jokes in every thread, any use of a word like "rear" or "behind" is just too great an opportunity to pass up.

Um, okay.

I recognize that the post was pretty incoherent, but "rear" is a common term. It certainly wasn't what hung me up. In any case, I don't think the natural assumption is that anyone was "sodomizing" him. You can pretend that you weren't trying to make one of your signature jokes, but it will just further diminish your credibility.

While I do understand the sentiment and agree that it sucks to feel shafted in terms of law school admissions, particularly with the school of your attendance being a major factor in your initial employment options. Diversity is a valid concern of a law school. And while the majority of white people alive today do not actively contribute to overt racism or the obstacles many minorities face, those same people cannot help without active effort benefiting from entrenched advantages from the collective American past, just as minorities still struggle to gain ground they were forcibly withheld from. Admittedly many do not take advantage of these opportunities and many of those end up on the news and elsewhere and in rap videos perhaps even as the star perpetuating stereotypes of people who it is harder to believe deserve some kind of help.

Another interesting point that would be something you could read up on would be the University of Michigan affirmative action case which invalidated points being added for minority status, but decided that it was entirely legitimate to allow for an even greater number of "admissions points" to be added for legacy. Who gains advantage from that? Your poor whites stuck in bad schools in poor neighborhoods without an edge in the world are left in the cold alongside the minorities and your additionally privileged middle and upper class whites who are more likely to have parents or siblings who went to the school benefit greatly. It is incredibly difficult without this advantage to get into Yale University. Yet the gripe you take up is some perceived sense of affirmative action which doesn't officially exist and especially not in the sense of your black people over white people sense. I do agree with you that background should play a larger role in considerations as white privilege is not the only privilege that many have and that it itself should not be conflated with class privilege though it is often because of the fact that the majority of minorities are in a lower class and the majority of whites are in a higher class.

I just wrote a very long response to your post that got lost when I was logged out upon posting. Maybe I'll try to rewrite it later.

However, the bottom line of the post was this: Whatever the actual numbers or percentages, there are in fact some white students who get shafted by this system. (As you yourself note, "Your poor whites stuck in bad schools in poor neighborhoods without an edge in the world are left in the cold".) These students are not privileged in any meaningful sense, and they are in fact far less privileged than many/most non-white applicants.

(The uber-wealthy, uber-privileged minorities listed are of course extreme examples, provided simply to refute the claim made by the other poster that all whites are inherently more privileged than all non-whites. However, there are in fact millions of non-white families that are better off than most white families, and there are even more white families that are worse off than most non-white families.)

We can't really blame such students for seeking to avoid the unfair stereotyping of a system that unjustifiably assumes advantage when no such advantage exists.

That's my key point here, in response to the other poster. One can certainly argue that such individual injustices are justified by broader social benefits (e.g., "diversity"). This is the argument behind any racial profiling, and preferential admissions are, of course, just one such type of profiling. I'm simply noting that the injustices exist, and that we can't really blame the victims of such policies for quietly protesting them by checking "other", however ineffectual and meaningless that protest may actually be.

(I won't go into here whether classes made up of privileged whites and privileged nonwhites are really more intellectually diverse than a class focused on economic/class diversity, but an argument could certainly be made in favor of the latter vs. the former, if intellectual diversity is really our primary goal.)

I have been batteling with the question of race my whole life..... My parents have a plethora of ethnicities in their blood, they both look white, but somehow I ended up looking pure Mexican. I have identified as white my whole life until about four years ago, when I realized racist people were rearing me as they would any other minority.....

Actually, if you read my post, I specifically ask if he's saying racist people were raising him (bringing him up). However, not even this makes sense, unless he's saying his parents were racist against him, which seems unlikely. (He clearly indicates he's still being raised by his biological parents, not foster parents or an orphanage.) I therefore suspect he intended another term altogether.

Finally, it's difficult to argue that "rear" is still the preferred term in this area, if it ever was, which is yet another reason it's an odd (and likely mistaken) word choice.

But I suppose if you're hellbent on making homophobic jokes in every thread, any use of a word like "rear" or "behind" is just too great an opportunity to pass up.

Um, okay.

I recognize that the post was pretty incoherent, but "rear" is a common term. It certainly wasn't what hung me up. In any case, I don't think the natural assumption is that anyone was "sodomizing" him. You can pretend that you weren't trying to make one of your signature jokes, but it will just further diminish your credibility.

Rear may be a common term in certain elite households, but it's certainly not a common term in most households today. Regardless, it doesn't appear to make sense in this context, which was the point of my post -- I was trying to figure out what the poster actually meant by the term. I didn't "assume" anyone was sodomizing the poster, I simply asked. For all I know that's exactly what the poster intended, so maybe you're the one who should refrain from unwarranted assumptions.

I will also note that it's unclear if the poster is male or female, so your "homophobia" attacks are clearly groundless.

Finally, I will note that it's you who appears to have a stick up her butt, and apparently needs to "de-rear" herself, and develop a sense of humor.

(I won't go into here whether classes made up of privileged whites and privileged nonwhites are really more intellectually diverse than a class focused on economic/class diversity, but an argument could certainly be made in favor of the latter vs. the former, if intellectual diversity is really our primary goal.)

I think you're being willfully obtuse about the meaning of diversity under Grutter. Part of the point is to include enough members of each racial group so that people cannot hold on to stereotypes about what black people are like or what white people think about X. To this end, of course it's important to have class diversity -- among students from all racial groups. Here are some relevant portions of O'Connor's opinion:

Quote

In order to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry, it is necessary that the path to leadership be visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity. All members of our heterogeneous society must have confidence in the openness and integrity of the educational institutions that provide this training. As we have recognized, law schools “cannot be effective in isolation from the individuals and institutions with which the law interacts.” See Sweatt v. Painter, supra, at 634. Access to legal education (and thus the legal profession) must be inclusive of talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity, so that all members of our heterogeneous society may participate in the educational institutions that provide the training and education necessary to succeed in America.

The Law School does not premise its need for critical mass on “any belief that minority students always (or even consistently) express some characteristic minority viewpoint on any issue.” Brief for Respondent Bollinger et al. 30. To the contrary, diminishing the force of such stereotypes is both a crucial part of the Law School’s mission, and one that it cannot accomplish with only token numbers of minority students. Just as growing up in a particular region or having particular professional experiences is likely to affect an individual’s views, so too is one’s own, unique experience of being a racial minority in a society, like our own, in which race unfortunately still matters. The Law School has determined, based on its experience and expertise, that a “critical mass” of underrepresented minorities is necessary to further its compelling interest in securing the educational benefits of a diverse student body.

...

To be narrowly tailored, a race-conscious admissions program must not “unduly burden individuals who are not members of the favored racial and ethnic groups.” Metro Broadcasting, Inc. v. FCC, 497 U.S. 547, 630 (1990) (O’Connor, J., dissenting).

We are satisfied that the Law School’s admissions program does not. Because the Law School considers “all pertinent elements of diversity,” it can (and does) select nonminority applicants who have greater potential to enhance student body diversity over underrepresented minority applicants. See Bakke, supra, at 317 (opinion of Powell, J.). As Justice Powell recognized in Bakke, so long as a race-conscious admissions program uses race as a “plus” factor in the context of individualized consideration, a rejected applicant

“will not have been foreclosed from all consideration for that seat simply because he was not the right color or had the wrong surname… . His qualifications would have been weighed fairly and competitively, and he would have no basis to complain of unequal treatment under the Fourteenth Amendment.” 438 U.S., at 318.

We agree that, in the context of its individualized inquiry into the possible diversity contributions of all applicants, the Law School’s race-conscious admissions program does not unduly harm nonminority applicants.

(I won't go into here whether classes made up of privileged whites and privileged nonwhites are really more intellectually diverse than a class focused on economic/class diversity, but an argument could certainly be made in favor of the latter vs. the former, if intellectual diversity is really our primary goal.)

I think you're being willfully obtuse about the meaning of diversity under Grutter.

Not at all -- I was simply responding to the other poster's definition of diversity.

Part of the point is to include enough members of each racial group so that people cannot hold on to stereotypes about what black people are like or what white people think about X. To this end, of course it's important to have class diversity -- among students from all racial groups. Here are some relevant portions of O'Connor's opinion:

Fwiw, the rationale cited to above is clearly a post-hoc justification for preferential admissions, like most other justifications. This is only confirmed by the fact that after making the argument diversity is needed to dispel such stereotypical views, the quote goes on to maintain that minorities do in fact hold stereotypical views.

In my view, it would better further the cause of disspelling stereotypes if we stopped pretending that all minorities (even privileged ones) need preferential admissions, and that all whites (even underprivileged ones) are somehow meaningfully advantaged in educational admissions. Just my opinion.

In my view, it would better further the cause of disspelling stereotypes if we stopped pretending that all minorities (even privileged ones) need preferential admissions, and that all whites (even underprivileged ones) are somehow meaningfully advantaged in educational admissions. Just my opinion.